


Stumped

by kuroiyousei



Series: November Quick Fics [7]
Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Canon Setting, F/M, POV: Miscellaneous (Applejack), Pointlessness, Pre-relationship story for main couple(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-09-28 01:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17173007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuroiyousei/pseuds/kuroiyousei
Summary: Spike wonders whom to ask to spend Hearts and Hooves Day with him. Applejack may know.





	Stumped

"Prop that there log up under here, would you, Spike?" 

Proof of the little dragon's trust in Applejack was the readiness with which he seized the piece of firewood in question and hopped down into the awkward hole beside her in order to squeeze it under part of the enormous tree stump she was holding partially up with her forehooves. If she were to lose her grip, the thing would swivel down on top of them, retaking its place in the gap in which they stood and crushing them without a trace. 

As it was, once Spike had wedged the log in place and vacated the hole, Applejack eased the stump down to test it; and when it held, standing perpendicular to its usual position propped on the other piece of wood, she made a satisfied sound and also jumped out. 

"Hey, Applejack!" was Spike's belated greeting. 

"Hiya, Spike," replied the amused pony as she positioned herself just at the edge of the hole. 

"Can I talk to you about something?" 

"Sure thing, if you don't mind me workin' on this gol-durned stump at the same time." She turned her back to the object in question, looking over her shoulder to adjust her angle. 

"OK," said Spike, then took a deep breath. His next phase came out all in a rush: "I need some advice about Hearts and Hooves Day." 

With great precision and all the force she could muster, Applejack bucked at the stump, hoping with the motion to disengage the two stubborn and inconveniently deep roots that yet held it in place. Unfortunately, all it actually did was dislodge the log from the stump's jagged underside and bring the latter creaking inevitably back down into its former home. "Darn it," Applejack muttered. Then she turned to Spike, who had watched with interest. "You need advice on how to ask Rarity to spend Hearts and Hooves Day with you?" 

"Well..." Spike traced a pattern in the dirt with one clawed foot. "Not exactly. See, I like Rarity... I really, really, _really_ like Rarity... but..." He gave a hopeless sigh. "She still thinks of me as a kid." 

"Rarity _is_ real sophisticated," Applejack admitted. "I think she'd prefer somepony older." She didn't mention, as unhelpful, how little it improved matters that Twilight always referred to Spike, however affectionately, as a 'baby dragon' -- which, though it might technically be true in terms of years, proportionally speaking, gave an inaccurate impression of Spike's level of development and maturity. 

"Yeah," said Spike, wistful and admiring. "So sophisticated." 

"Won't do any good to dwell on it," Applejack said with matter-of-fact sympathy. "Who're you gonna ask instead?" She was studying the stump from all sides again, trying to determine, since bucking hadn't worked, what would be the most efficient method of getting it out of there. 

"That's..." She could hear him pawing the ground again, but presently this was overridden by a brief belching sound and the rustle of paper. "...actually what I want your advice about." 

She glanced over to find him holding a scroll that, as it unrolled, proved longer than he was tall. Stifling a laugh she commented, "You've been workin' for Twilight for too long." 

"Do you think so?" Spike asked somewhat anxiously. "Just, she's the first pony on my list..." 

Applejack had gone back to examining the troublesome roots. "Just a joke, Spike," she assured him with a grin. "Twilight's a genius when it comes to organization, and that's been useful to everypony in this town." Moving to the wagon in whose bed her tools waited (not to mention a huge heap of firewood from the tree she'd felled), she hopped up. As she tossed her shovel shoes down over the side, their brief presence in her mouth muffled her subsequent words somewhat: "But for Hearts and Hooves Day, dontcha think you might like somepony a little more spontaneous? She'd probably put you on a tighter schedule than you'd really enjoy." 

Spike made a note on his list (she had no idea where he'd been keeping the quill) as Applejack jumped back down from the wagon. "Well, there's Rainbow Dash," he suggested, hovering the tip of his pen over another spot on the paper. 

Applejack chuckled. "Can't get better than Rainbow Dash for spontaneity!" Adjusting her shovel shoes and slipping her forehooves into them, she added, "Rainbow's a lot of fun, too. You'd have an excitin' Hearts and Hooves Day with her! She might wear you out, though; she doesn't always notice when ponies around her don't have as much energy as she does." 

"True," Spike agreed with a nod, and jotted something down. "But I bet I wouldn't have to worry about that with Fluttershy!" 

Applejack had begun driving the blades now attached to her feet into the earth beside one of the problem roots. She would never be able to get at the stupid thing with a saw, but if she cleared the dirt down to a point where the root wasn't so stubbornly thick, she could try an axe. And as she dug she replied to Spike's latest proposal. "No, you're right about that: Fluttershy's always sensitive to ponies around her. You might have a sweet old time with her." She paused in her vigorous attack on the ground and looked over at him with a rueful expression. "She really _is_ shy, though, obvious as that sounds to say. She might be too bashful to enjoy anythin' y'all decided to do together that day, if she even agreed in the first place." 

Spike nodded decisively, evidently accepting this assessment, and made another mark on his list. "You know who's not shy, though?" 

"Pinkie Pie?" Applejack speculated as she returned to her digging. 

Spike sounded startled. "Yeah; how'd you know?" 

"Lucky guess?" Digging down the sides of the root was proving somewhat tricky, and she was coming at it in bits and pieces from various angles. 

"Well, yeah, then, what about Pinkie Pie?" 

"She knows how to have fun if anypony does!" Applejack replied, the thought of the broadness of Pinkie's definition of 'fun' making her grin. "And she can always come up with things to do, so y'all'd never be bored..." 

As Applejack trailed off in the relative silence of the shovel shoes' continued scraping thunks into the ground, Spike wondered, "But...?" 

Somewhat reluctantly Applejack answered, "But dontcha think an entire day with _just_ Pinkie might get a little... crazy? I'd never want to insinuate an earth pony wasn't down-to-earth enough, but sometimes Pinkie Pie..." 

"'Possible sensory overload,'" Spike muttered as he scribbled. 

Applejack gave a laugh of agreement, but found her smile turning to a faint frown as she looked at the dragon and his lengthy paper. "Now, just how many more names do you have on that there list?" she wondered warily. 

"Oh, tons," Spike replied. "There's Cheerilee, and Rainbow's friend Gilda, and Time Turner, and Vinyl Scratch, and Lyra, and Big McIntosh--" 

Applejack was afraid she would have some disqualifying news about more than a few of the ponies Spike was considering, but on this topic as well as the conspicuous lack of one particular name she had no comment as yet. What she wanted to know next, gently interrupting the recital, was, "And why'd you come to _me_ about this, Spike?" 

"Because," the dragon replied earnestly, lowering his paper and looking at her with big green eyes, "you're always so honest. I feel like I could come to you about anything, I guess." 

"Well, you keep right on feelin' that way," Applejack told him with a smile that probably concealed very well the bittersweetness of this turn in the conversation. "But why this in particular?" 

"You can tell me exactly what would be great about every one of our friends... and what wouldn't be so great... as a special somepony for Hearts and Hooves day." His looks and tone became despondent as he added, "And it seems like everypony has _something_ about them that wouldn't be so great..." 

"Aw, Spike, you can't think about it that way," she chided kindly. "If I made it sound like any of our friends wouldn't be a great choice for you to ask, I didn't mean it. _Nopony's_ perfect; you'll _never_ find somepony who won't have _some_ problem. That's the thing about havin' a special somepony, even if it's just for one day: you gotta work together to have fun in spite of everythin' that 'wouldn't be so great.' It takes a _lot_ of hard work sometimes, but that just makes it better." 

"I guess," he said a little doubtfully, looking down at his list again. 

Applejack too returned her eyes downward. She'd made good progress on the root, but it was going to take as long again to render it accessible to an axe, and even once it was severed she would probably need to dig further along its length to free it from the constricting earth in order to lift the stump out. And then there was the _other_ root. 

"I think we could both use a break," she said at length. "Wanna ride to the house for some cider before we tackle this again?" 

"Sure!" With an air of some relief, Spike rerolled his paper and fire-breathed it back to whatever hiding place, hopefully safe from Twilight's sharp eyes, it had originally come from (and perhaps his pen with it?). 

Applejack, meanwhile, shed her shovel shoes and stretched out her forelegs. When she found the little dragon standing next to her, she reached out to grip between her teeth the spines just south of his neck and toss him up over her head and onto her back. His innocent laughter at the stunt energized her, and she crouched slightly, tensed to run. "Time me!" she commanded. 

"All right!" His little clawed hands gripped her mane just beneath her hat. "Ready? Set? Go!" 

There was a certain type of withholding of information that was not a lie by omission, but rather a recognition that the truth had not yet matured into an appreciable form. Though he might not be a kid, precisely, Spike _was_ still young, and had a lot to learn, both of universal constants and specific possibilities, not to mention of himself. It would never do to try to rush him. And Applejack, for all Spike might value her honest advice, probably had a thing or two to pick up as well. They could figure it out together, given time. 

For now, they just galloped off through the trees.

**Author's Note:**

> This was for MangoFox's November Quick Fics 2017 prompt, "MLP fic where Spike has multiple romantic interests. So he goes to Applejack to get advice on whom to choose. But it turns out that Applejack is actually the best choice for him." I did not watch a single episode to prepare myself for writing this, none of Spike's sarcasm ever happened, much to my sorrow, and the implied Applejack & Spike ended up kinda vague. Ah, well.


End file.
